NBN switched on in Brisbane today

The National Broadband Network will be switched on for the first time in Brisbane on Wednesday.

About 500 homes in the northern Brisbane suburb of Aspley will be connected to the optic fire cable network, with about 1700 to follow in the coming weeks.

Aspley falls on the border of Treasurer Wayne Swan's Brisbane seat of Lilley, which he holds by a 3.2 per cent margin.

And other parts of of the suburb fall within the neighbouring marginal seat of Petrie, which Labor holds by 2.51 per cent.

However, a spokesman for NBN Co said the rollout in Aspley was not driven by politics or electoral borders.

Advertisement

"It is driven by sound engineering reasons - not least where usable Telstra equipment such as exchanges and their underground pipes are located,’’ Andrew Sholl said in a statement.

‘‘The NBN is being rolled out to every corner of Australia and electoral borders do not factor in where gets switched on.’’

NBN cables are currently being laid in the surrounding suburbs of Carseldine and Bridgeman Downs as well as Ascot, Banyo, Collingwood Park, Eagle Farm, Goodna, Hamilton, Hendra, Northgate, Nudgee, Redbank Plains and Virginia.

About 100,000 homes, firms, businesses and schools will be connected across Brisbane over the next three years.

It will take more than nine years to run the fibre optic cable around Australia.

Brisbane is the fourth capital city to get the NBN.

Melbourne came online in October last year while Hobart and Canberra went live in early February.

Brisbane is Queensland's third city to get the NBN after Townsville in north Queensland and Toowoomba west of Brisbane.